For instance as soon as I had children I stopped writing music and went back to being a Chef. I didn’t really want to but then I saw the benefits it had on my family.
If I were selfish I’d just stay doing what I love the most.

With three children now I work nights so that I can see more of my family. But I don’t just see them; I’m taking the kids to the park, teaching them how to read and write, etc.

I have sacrificed the things I want to do and chosen to do what I need to. I mostly enjoy my job because I know I can support my family on my wages, I would earn much more freelancing as an audio engineer, or even stopping to complete my books. But my life can wait because my wife and children need me.

I realized that before I had a wife and children I was living life for myself, an endless cycle of nothingness. My wages were blown on entertaining myself but it never left me feeling “fulfilled” or “complete”.

If I happen to help someone today I will feel that the day has truly been spent doing something good. I help others because I want to and in return I feel good about it. I don’t give charity in the form of money because I simply cannot afford it.

Opportunities to help others appear everywhere each day; what needs to happen is people need to want to help others. The only way that will happen is if more people set good examples of doing exactly that.

I’ve returned bags and wallets that I’ve found lost at shopping centers, almost every time the employees are baffled as to why I did return them at all.

The world needs more active good examples of charity and sacrifice in view everyday so that good behavior replaces bad as the norm.

Strange that you equate altruism with taking responsibility for the children you had.

“What is the moral code of altruism? The basic principle of altruism is that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the only justification of his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, virtue and value.

Do not confuse altruism with kindness, good will or respect for the rights of others. These are not primaries, but consequences, which, in fact, altruism makes impossible. The irreducible primary of altruism, the basic absolute, is self-sacrifice—which means; self-immolation, self-abnegation, self-denial, self-destruction—which means: the self as a standard of evil, the selfless as a standard of the good.

Do not hide behind such superficialities as whether you should or should not give a dime to a beggar. That is not the issue. The issue is whether you do or do not have the right to exist without giving him that dime. The issue is whether you must keep buying your life, dime by dime, from any beggar who might choose to approach you. The issue is whether the need of others is the first mortgage on your life and the moral purpose of your existence. The issue is whether man is to be regarded as a sacrificial animal. Any man of self-esteem will answer: “No.” Altruism says: “Yes.”